Guest curator, Louky Keijsers, has assembled this exhibition of
international video / film artists whose works address the faith in, but also
the loss of, a belief in Utopia. They address issues of identity, gender, and
sexuality, in a manner that reflects the psychoanalytic ideas of Jacques Lacan
-- and how they apply to the "uncanny magic of film images." These images
maintain a distance, no matter how close they are. As the critic Georges
Didi-Huberman notes, "something has appeared from out of the hidden, but its
manifestation will stubbornly retain every trace of distance or depth that
condemns it to eternally work at concealment."

A speculum is an instrument for dilating a bodily passage or cavity, throwing
light within them in order to examine the interior; or a mirror--especially one
made of polished metal--for use as an optical instrument. Keijsers sees art as a
similar tool which functions as "the practical component of philosophy" in
exploring the concealed, the esoteric, and the deepest recesses of human
experience.

The related October Series - Engaging the Speculum: Film/Video/Media
will present speakers on the manifold threads of discourse about media and
meaning in reference to our past and future.